UK Roundtable presents baseline report on sustainable soya

The Baseline Report on the consumption of soya in the UK was written by Efeca for and on behalf of the UK Roundtable on Sustainable Soya (Roundtable), an industry led group which aims to accelerate progress towards a secure, resilient supply of sustainable soya to the UK.

The official launch event of the UK Roundtable on Sustainable Soya was held on the 12th July at which the following Goal was agreed:

The UK Government supports Roundtable signatories’ commitment to soya that is legal and cultivated in a way that protects against conversion of forests and valuable native vegetation. This will be achieved by signatories committing to:

publish timebound plans, by April 2019, to achieve this;

meaningful and demonstrable progress towards this Goal by 2020.

This report provides a ‘baseline’ against which future reports can measure the progress of the Roundtable in meeting its goal. Progress reports will be published annually until 2020.

The report draws on a wide range of publicly available data sources, and confidential member submissions to understand the total volume of soya consumed in the UK, the proportion of this soya that comes from sustainable sources and where Roundtable members are currently positioned. The report explores both direct imports and soya that is ‘embedded’ in other imported products such as meat and dairy imports.

The baseline report indicates that in 2017 the total volume of soya consumed in the UK is estimated to be 3.8 million tonnes of soybean equivalents. This breaks down as 3.1 million tonnes of direct imports, and at least 700,000 tonnes of soya embedded in other imports such as meat products.

The proportion of UK soya estimated to be from a ‘sustainable’ source is around 30%, though it could be as high as 60%. This figure is challenging to confirm as there is a lack of publicly available reports from sustainable soya schemes with a focus on the UK, and different supply chain actors will be using differing sources of information.

According to confidential Roundtable member submissions:

56% of responding businesses have formulated soya specific policies, while 13% have deforestation policies that cover multiple commodities including soya.

Of those who submitted their data, 37% of members have already started to apply their soya policy and are up to 50% in line with the Roundtable goal.

25% of members are more than half way to having all soya compliant with their aim.

Efeca is working closely with key partners and other national initiatives to ensure an aligned approach to monitoring and reporting and will provide an update on this collaboration in the first annual progress report.

The next report will be the annual progress report and will be published in Summer 2019. For more information, please contact info@efeca.com